Correcting Inaccuracies

For those of you who are avid readers of the Echo letters pages you may have come across a readers letter from Peter Lovett, one of the self imposed North Korea style 'leaders' of Friends of Shoebury Common.

It has been evidently clear for some time that I have been the target for Dear Leader Peter. One can only assume that I am of that rare breed who has the balls to question his 'facts'.

On Friday evening, I was made aware of another of the infamous SKIPP squats, sorry, camp at Shoebury Common in protest at the improvements to flood defences at Shoebury Common. From a SKIPP press release after Cabinet on the 5th November, where the decision was taken to agree the Council's preferred option for an embankment behind the back of the Beach Huts, it is clear that SKIPP do not want any flood defences - including the Friends of Shoebury Common proposal.

If you were to take the readers letter from Dear Leader Peter as gospel then the Friends of Shoebury Common played no part in the actions of SKIPP. Well, not quite, as a facebook message posted by SKIPP on Sunday after they ended their occupation confirmed that the Friends of Shoebury Common were aiding their weekend of action.

Now as per Dear Leader Peter's letter I was never invited to attend camp squat. However, my lack of invite clearly had not reached the rest of the Friends of Shoebury Common Politburo as Comrade Peter Grubb took great delight in an email that I received on Sunday for not turning up and talking to concerned residents.

If Dear Leader Peter wishes to quote from an email of mine regarding residents 'seething at their actions' then he would be wise to either understand the whole email chain or try not to deceive. Following Comrade Grubb's original email I replied as follows:

In the garbled rant of a response by Comrade Grubb, was this little snippet:

Oh dear, clearly Comrade Grubb was either unaware of the SKIPP press release from the 5th November or was trying to deceive. I responded as follows:

Interestingly, I am still awaiting the response to my question at the end. Next, the question of me refusing to attend the SKIPP/Friends of Shoebury Common debate because of the 'questions' and 'facts' presented to me. On the 12th November I received the following invite:

I then responded as follows:

 Dear Peter received the following response from Council officers:

As point 2 of my original response had not been met I was true to my word and confirmed that I would not be attending.

As Dear Peter claimed that I refused to attend due to his 'questions' and 'facts' was this a bare faced lie? I will let you, the readers, be judge of that. What this weekend really showed was the true colours of the Friends of Shoebury Common. I now offer them the challenge to come clean on their real motives for Shoebury Common in that they are not really interested in protecting peoples lives, homes and livelihoods.